As we embarked upon the quests in the recent expansion to World of Warcraft, Warlords of Draenor, many of us were surprised to find that our flying mounts remained grounded in the new zones of the planet Draenor. Well, Blizzard initially planned to patch the ability to fly in the new areas further into the campaign, but that has changed.
In a recent interview with Polygon, Ion Hazzikostas talked a little about the role of flying in the game so far and the future in the current content. “Having looked at how flying has played out in the old world in the last couple of expansions, we realized that while we were doing it out of this ingrained habit after we introduced flying in The Burning Crusade, it actually detracted from gameplay in a whole lot of ways. While there was certainly convenience in being able to completely explore the world in three dimensions, that also came at the expense of gameplay like targeted exploration, like trying to figure out what’s in that cave on top of a hill and how do I get up there.”
In World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria players were forced to ditch their flying ability and trek around the new continent, but it was later patched in. I for one applaud the decision to make the new content a no fly zone, while flight does allow a certain level of convenience for some tasks, walking around these interesting, beautiful landscapes gives a sense of how much work went into making the new content look, sound and feel like a genuine world. It also brings back the sheer scale of the game. Instead of taking a few minutes to fly over mountains and forests at lightning speed players are forced to navigate through an environment that took a bunch of people a whole lot of time to create and it reminds us of how big this world (of Warcraft) is.
Do you want flying in Draenor? Are you happy trekking through the content? Or do you just boost around using Aviana’s Feather? Let me know in the comments below!